processors

This is a discussion on processors within the Tech Board forums, part of the Community Boards category; Hi
if pentium chips sit at the top of the ladder where would athlone and celeron chips stand
Im needing ...

There have been loads of debates on this board about which processor is better than which other processor. You will get different opinions from different people. You are better off researching for yourself on the web and finding what suits your needs.

To be honest though, unless you want to play the latest and greatest games, all the current chips are likely to be more than ample for your needs. I run with an old K6-3 450 and I manage perfectly well.

I've been using athelon for a while now. I was using intel for my DOS machines because the old ones are easy to find. AMD makes an awesome chip. I'm using a AMD Athelon 2000+ in mine and it kicks some butt. I've played a little bit with p4's, but i still think that AMD just works better and is more reliable. That's just experiance and no facts though. Take it for what it's worth.

The family PC here uses a Celeron 500mhz. Celeron could be viewed as Intel's "spare parts". Duron could be viewed as AMD's spare parts.

For intel, use pentium.
For AMD use XP, Althon, n what not.
Stray from Celeron and Duron.

This pc uses a 500mhz Celeron though, and it handles original Unreal Tournament fine. It handles original quake fine. Basic windows use is great coupled with 256mb ram. What else. It handles the Nebula arcade emulator great. Everything has been rock solid smooth with that emulator except Metal Slug 2. One of the Nintendo 64 emulators pushes out Mario 64 nicely on 500mhz. With MAME, I can run classic street fighter good and Basically anything that isn't new taito, or new midway hardware. Compiling programs is fine. Internet surfing is fine. The only thing that would lack would probably be MAME, or emulators as those require huge cpu's. But, if you're not looking to go that route a decent AMD cpu, or somewhat outdated intel should do you fine.

celerons are dirt cheap and are good for overclocking (I have heard) the abcense of a l2 cash however makes them rather ineficient. I am guessing that with a celeron having fast ram would be be more important then ever. A celeron is also nice if you plan on upgrading to a better one a somepoint. Personally I kind of suspect that amd and apple just say there processors are more effiecient because they lag behind in speed. None the less Amd are also cheaper then intell, so you can't go wrong if you don't need a high end processor.(who can aford an intell 2.8+ anyway processor)

IMO, and my opinion only, I think Celeron's are not the best thing in the world. AMD's perform good. Intel's are expensive and odds are AMD's fastest chip would outperform intel's.

OP:
Consider how much money you want to spend.
What's important to you?
Speed? (CPU & RAM)
Graphics? (extrenal high end graphics card)
Sound? (external high end sound card)

Considering I'm not into pc games all that much at all, my ASUS A78NX motherboard, that comes with onboard 5.1 channel surround sound and onboard 64mb video that's comparable to the GeForce4, it'll do me good. My mobo was $130 or so though. It's the non-deluxe version of the ASUS. (2nd best mobo for an AMD system)

CPU & RAM are important to me as I do mainly windows work and play emulators far more than pc games. PC game's work is split up: CPU & RAM, soundcard for sound, graphics chip for video. Emulation - everything is processed by your CPU and sent plain and simple to your sound card and basic(2d) video card. The roms are loaded into memory. (Example: X-Men VS Street Fighter will refuse to load on 64mb of ram, and will be choppy on less than 500mhz)

The options..are endless really. Get back to us if you have any specifics..

The reason AMD "outperforms" INTEL is because the architecture of an INTEL chip has a 20+ stage pipeline where AMD has a 11 stage pipeline - this pipeline is what has a major effect on the 'per cycle' speed of the chip.

But the same pipeline allows INTEL to process more data per cycle which only shows it's benefit when you are playing a 3D game where you need as much power as the chip can give - in the gaming area and in graphics INTEL way outperforms AMD because of how much it can process. AMD is at it's power limits under it's current architecture. INTEL keeps improving it's speed.